Modelling dust formation in single stars evolving through the carbon-star stage of the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) (i.e., the late evolutionary stages of Sun-like stars) reproduces reasonably well the mid-infrared colours and magnitudes of most of the C-rich sources in low-metallicity galaxies with known distances like the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The only exception to this is a small subset of extremely red objects (EROs). An analysis of the spectral energy distributions of EROs suggests the presence of large quantities of dust, which demand gas densities in the outflow significantly

Hayabusa2’s optical navigation camera (ONC) found many anomalously bright boulders on the dark surface of the carbonaceous (or C-type) asteroid Ryugu. Observations with ONC and the near-infrared spectrometer (NIRS3) indicates that at least six of those bright boulders exhibit reflectance spectra consistent with exogenous origin; their spectra are similar to rocky (or S-type) asteroids. This means that the bright boulders resulted from collisional mixing between Ryugu’s parent body and S-type asteroid(s). On Bennu, the asteroid explored by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, bright boulders with spectra

This afternoon the DRAGO infrared camera, developed by the team at IACTEC-Space, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), and integrated into the ION satellite carrier of the Italian company D-Orbit, has been successfully launched into space on Space X’s Falcon 9 rocket. The Transporter-1 mission, as it is called, was carried out without a hitch during the first hour of the launch window which opened at 15:00 h UTC, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida (USA).